Category Archives: history

stick a pin in it

Posted on September 10, 2020 by Robert

Toronto. Just over three years ago I did a post on the simple pinhole camera. This wonderful solution to a camera for all even had a day devoted to photographs taken by pinhole cameras (a day in April). My friend … Continue reading →

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once upon a time in Canada

Posted on September 8, 2020 by Robert

Toronto. A few years after the second world war ended, Ernst Leitz established a factory in Midland, Ontario. At this subsidiary factory cameras were assembled from Wetzlar parts, manufactured, and lenses were assembled, manufactured and designed. In our journal, issue … Continue reading →

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stretching it

Posted on September 7, 2020 by Robert

Toronto. Good friend, PHSC member, and photographic historian George Dunbar shared this bit of whimsey with me. The February 1928 issue of “Science and Invention” included an article titled, “Enlarging Photos by Stretching” attributed to an “A W Herbert”. Herbert … Continue reading →

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take it and show it

Posted on September 6, 2020 by Robert

Toronto. One of the headaches facing the home movie crowd was the fact so many different gadgets were needed to take and show movies. One idea was to use just one instrument as both the camera, and with added illumination, … Continue reading →

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illuminating and breathless

Posted on September 3, 2020 by Robert

Toronto. This is a photo of a cameraman slowly moving by a wheelie while the lighting and actors stay in place. The lady in the striped dress is none other than the tragic Jean Seberg with her French co-star Jean Paul … Continue reading →

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colour home movies in 1929

Posted on September 2, 2020 by Robert

Toronto. Even today, we use ways to separate and re-combine primary colours to create realistic viewable colour images, be they prints, computer screens, smartphones, or TV. The concept itself is over a century and a half old. James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated … Continue reading →

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most gifted

Posted on September 1, 2020 by Robert

Toronto. Today when someone says, “most gifted”, we usually think of a very bright child worthy of accelerated and/or in-depth learning. Today, when we think of compact cameras we usually mean smartphones. In the summer of 1967, a Kodak advertisement … Continue reading →

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girls of Dawson City

Posted on August 31, 2020 by Robert

Toronto. We often heard of the gold rush and the men “who moil for gold” as Robert Service says in his poem “The Cremation of Sam McGee“, but we seldom heard of the girls of questionable virtue attracted to the … Continue reading →

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zombie jamboree

Posted on August 27, 2020 by Robert

Toronto. Early photographic media were unable to record the much weaker lower end of the visible spectrum (reds, some oranges) but what about the spectrum above the visible blues and violets? In 1896, just weeks after Germany’s Wilhelm Röntgen publicly … Continue reading →

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a hint to the future of colour photography

Posted on August 26, 2020 by Robert

Toronto. In February 1931, the magazine Science and Invention had this brief note on the status of a new colour process taken on by Kodak. It modestly states, “These processes are said to be as simple as those involved in … Continue reading →

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